Place-Names in Immigrant Communities

PLACE-NAMES IN IMMIGRANT COMMUNITIES
Concerning the Giving of Swedish Place-Names
in America
F O L K E H E D B L OM
Translated by W E S L E Y W E S T E R B E RG
Where history is silent, the land itself often speaks through
the names of its rivers and mountains, its villages and farms.
Place-names are without question to be counted among the
most enduring creations of human thought.
E S A I A S TEGNÉR, the Younger, U r språkens värld, I I I.
Swedish emigration to North America during the latter half
of the nineteenth century is without comparison the greatest in
the history of Sweden. Approximately 1.3 million Swedes—a
significant part of the nation's population—sailed over the At­lantic
and established new homes for themselves and their fami­lies
in the far-flung territory of the West. Compared with this
folk migration, earlier emigrations from Scandinavia, like the
Viking invasions of Normandy and of the British isles, appear
almost insignificant. If on the other hand we were to assume for
the sake of argument that nothing would be known in the future
about Swedish colonization in America except what is derived
from place-names, the comparison would be otherwise. The mi­gration
to the New World would then seem to be a relatively
minor episode.
It is a known fact that there are a good many Swedish names
on the map of modern America. An annotated list made by the
American-Swedish writer, Vilhelm Berger, was published in
N a m n o c h B y g d , III (1938). The list seems to be representative
and fairly complete. Even if various names could be added here
and there, they would not distort the overall picture either of
the character of the treasury of American-Swedish place-names
246
that have been preserved or of its relative size and geographical
distribution.1
Berger accounts for a total of approximately 225 different
names. The same names appear in several places, for example,
Stockholm, Vasa, New Sweden, et al. The number of places with
Swedish names in the United States and Canada is about 300.2
In Normandy alone the number of Scandinavian place-names
far exceeds this figure. Names which include t o m t or t o f t , as in­vestigated
by Bengt Holmberg, add up to 346.3 No accurate count
is available on other names with Scandinavian origin. Still more
numerous are the Scandinavian place-names in England and
Scotland and the other British islands.4 They could well num­ber
in the thousands. Even if one takes into consideration the
fact that the frequency of place-names in America is in general
less than in Europe,5 this comparison would show that there
is no direct, simple connection between the number of immi­grants
and the number of place-names they bequeathed to pos­terity.
"According to information in L. ljungmark, D e n s t o r a u t v a n d r i n g e n (The
Great Emigration, a textbook for Sveriges Radio, Stockholm, 1965), pp.
139 ff. O. R. Landelius, Göteborg author, has an unpublished collection of
more than 800 place-names of Swedish origin in America. Included in it also
are various Swedish names which have been given by Americans in an
American setting and therefore do not indicate Swedish residence. The
place-names referred to by Ljungmark are in all cases the same type as
the names in Berger's list. Some additional names of the same kind are
found in E . Gustav Johnson, "The Study of American Place-Names of
Swedish Origin," in C o v e n a n t Q u a r t e r l y , Nov., 1946, and in his "Place-
Names and Swedish Pioneers," in B u l l e t i n o j T h e A m e r i c a n S w e d i s h I n ­s
t i t u t e , Minneapolis, Vol. V , No. 3, Sept. 1950.
approximate figures, including even names of churches, children's homes,
etc., in cities. It is often uncertain, from an American point of view, what
should be regarded as duplication, as for example: Alfsborg, Elfsborg, Ells-b
u r g , named for Älvsborg in Sweden.
SB. Holmberg, "Tomt och toft som appelativ och ortnamnselement," and
literature cited in S k r i f t e r u t g i v n a a v K u n g l . G u s t a v A d o l f s A k a d e m i e n,
XVII. See also: J . A . des Gautries, "Les noms de personnes scandinaves
en Normandie de 911 å 1066," N o m i n a G e r m a n i c a , XI, and literature cited.
"In Lincolnshire alone there are c. 250 names ending in - b y and over
100 ending in - t o r p , according to P. Skautrup, D e t D a n s k e S p r o g s H i s t o r ie
(History of the Danish Language), I, pp. 99ff. See also especially Harald
Lindkvist, M i d d l e - E n g l i s h P l a c e - N a m e s of S c a n d i n a v i a n O r i g i n , I; E.
Björkman in N a m n o c h B y g d , 1, pp. 80ff.; E. Ekwall, "The Scandinavian
Element," in E n g l i s h P l a c e - N a m e S o c i e t y , I; and A . H. Smith, "English
Place-Name Elements," Parts 1, 2, in E n g l i s h P l a c e - N a m e S o c i e t y , X X V -
VI. For Scotland see, among others, articles by W. F . H . Nicolaisen in
S c o t t i s h S t u d i e s.
"George R. Stewart, N a m e s o n t h e L a n d (New York, 1945; rev. ed., Boston,
1958), pp. 418, 444. See also Georgacas's review in N a m e s , VIII, p. 91.
247
The area settled by Swedes in the United States extends es­sentially
all the way across the northern part of the country.
The Southern states, except for Kansas and Texas, with their
warm climate did not attract the Swedes. The densest agglomera­tion
of Swedish immigrants around the turn of the century
occurred in the North Central states: northern Illinois, Min­nesota,
Nebraska, and Michigan. Other strong concentrations
of Swedes are to be found in the East—in the New York-Boston
area, in the western corner of the state of New York and ad­joining
districts—and in the Pacific Northwest. To these areas
must be added the neighboring provinces of Canada. Swedish
settlements occur more sporadically in intervening states. •
By superimposing on a map the place-names catalogued by
Berger, the picture of Swedish settlement is shown more clearly
concentrated in the upper Middle West and more specifically
Minnesota. More than one-third of all the names are found in
this state. Illinois, which taken as a whole has more Swedes
than Minnesota, turns up only five names, and the large Swedish
population in the East and the far West only a few names.
The explanation of this sharp difference between Minnesota
and Illinois, for example, is obviously to be found in the differ­ent
types of settlements. In Minnesota Swedes were a rural people
and in Illinois they were urban. Swallowed up by such metrop­olises
as Chicago, Rockford, Rock Island, Moline, and others, the
immigrants did not contribute place-names aside from sporadic
names for churches, homes for the aged, and similar institutions.
In 1930,6 46.1% of the Minnesota Swedes lived in the country,
but in Illinois the rural population comprised only 13.8% of first-and
second-generation Swedes. In terms of the strictly "rural-farm"
population, the figures are 32.5 and 7% respectively. Even
in the West Coast states and in the East the relative number
of city dwellers is large. Whether or not a group of immigrants
generates place-names depends on the type of settlement, al­though
other factors are also involved.
The Swedish names which have survived on American maps
strike the researcher as repetitious and meager. Approximately
"Statistical information from H. Nelson, T h e S w e d e s and t h e S w e d i s h
S e t t l e m e n t s i n N o r t h A m e r i c a , 2 vols. (Skrifter utgivna av Kungliga H u ­manistiska
Vetenskapssamfundet i Lund), XXXVII.
248
one-third of them are names of places in Sweden: S t o c k h o l m,
F a l u n , M a l m o , B o x h o l m , S m o l a n , etc. The next largest group
comprises adapted Swedish surnames like C a r l s o n , E r i c k s o n,
D a h l g r e n , H o l m q u i s t , or Christian names like E r i c k , O s c a r , M a n ­d
a , O l i v i a . Even nature names follow the same pattern: B l o om
L a k e , S k o g m a n L a k e , L a k e O s c a r , E r i c s s o n P e a k e , P o i n t S t o c k ­h
o l m . The "generics"7 in these latter names are borrowed from
the English. The same is true with compound settlement names
like H a n s o n v i l l e , M u n t e r v i l l e , and Palm Valley. Strict Swedish
combinations have often been anglicized; along with L i n d s b o r g
and M a r i a d a l can be found S w a n b u r g , and E r i c k s d a l e . The
spelling is sometimes adapted to English pronunciation: L a r s s on
to L a w s o n , V a s a to W a u s a . Difficult sound sequences are avoided
by transposing to corresponding words or forms in English:
B i s k o p s k u l l a to "Bishop H i l l , " N y a S v e r i g e to "New Sweden."
Such names in our context must be considered Swedish in spite
of the form; they have been applied in most cases by Swedes
themselves. Biblical names also appear, as a rule, in connection
with churches and congregations: B e t a n i a , S a l e m s b o r g . In some
places a congregation has been divided into districts; in Vasa,
Minnesota, were found K y r k r o t e n , Göta r o t e n , Skåne, Väster­b
o t t e n , et al.8
These types of name-giving follow the pattern that was cus­tomary
in nineteenth-century America and was inherited from
colonial times. Both the native Americans and the immigrants
from different countries gave their new settlements place-names
or proper names taken from the old country: C a m b r i d g e , P a r i s,
T o l e d o , L i n c o l n , B i s m a r c k , T h o m a s . Generics like - b u r g and
- v i l l e were popular at times and were combined with "specifics"
from different languages.9 For the Swedes, this type of name-giving
was well known from the homeland. New settlements in
Norrland, in the northern part of Sweden, received names like
Småland and S i b i r i e n , and parishes received names like G u s t av
'Swedish place-name research lacks internationally applicable terms
for förled and e f t e r l e d . American researchers use "specifics" and "generics."
See Stewart, op. cit., p. 452, with references, and the journal N a m e s .
"E. Norelius, V a s a I l l u s t r a t a , p. 189.
"Stewart, o p . c i t . See distribution charts opposite p. 257. O. Springer,
"Ortsnamen in der Neuen Welt" (Place-names in the New World), in
G e r m . - R o m a n . M o n a t s s c h r i f t , XXI, pp. 125 ff.
249
A d o l f a n d V i l h e l m i n a . 1 0
Common to these Swedish names in America is the fact that
they arose from a deliberate attempt to fix names; places were
"christened." Most of the non-Indian names on the map originated
in the same way. The question then arises: Was there also, at
least within the larger settlements out in the country, any spon­taneous
name-giving of the common variety with Swedish noun,
adjective, name of person, etc., as root—in other words, an un­conscious
name-giving as occurred in the Danelaw in England?
The largest and most numerous of the strictly Swedish farming
communities where our emigrants could most easily preserve
their language and their own life style were found after 1850
in the virgin farmlands near the upper Mississippi River Valley
and its tributaries. During the latter part of the nineteenth cen­tury,
in such states as Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska,
arose a series of pioneer communities which in older times were
called "settlements" and to which Swedes immigrated in large
numbers. Here the Swedes were from the outset a safe major­ity,
and the Swedish language was dominant for a long time.
None of these settlements, however, has offered more favorable
advantages for the use of Swedish names than the adjacent areas
which form the largest part of both Chisago and Isanti Coun­ties
in Minnesota, northeast of the Twin Cities. Both of these
counties together covered an area of 2,223 square kilometers,
comparable to almost half of Uppsala län.1 1 In 1910 the Swedes
comprised 75% of the population. From my experience traveling
in most sections of Swedish-America, I know that the Swedish
language—especially our folk dialect—has nowhere been main­tained
so well into the third immigrant generation as here. For
the most part the Swedes in this area have been farmers living
strictly in the country or in very small communities. The largest
place is the town of Cambridge with 1,183 inhabitants (1930).
Before Swedish immigration began in 1851—primarily from Da¬
larna, Hälsingland, and Småland—there were only a few insig­nificant
scattered settlements. The land had not yet been sur-
1 0 A . Noreen, "Moderna Bostadnamn" in N a m n o c h B y g d , 1915, pp. 1 ff.
Regarding Nordic transferred names see also K. Hald, V o r e s t e d n a v n e,
Copenhagen, 1950, pp. 194 ff. and, with respect to England, A . Janzen in
N a m e s , V, p. 98.
1 1 Nelson, op. c i t . , II, pp. 29-30.
250
veyed. It was part of the huge triangle-shaped wilderness which
the Indians handed over to the U . S. Government in 1837-38."
Here one could reasonably expect to find a strong concentration
of Swedish place-names.
But this is not the case. Scanning the modern well-detailed road
maps of Minnesota, one finds within these two counties altogether
about 45 place-names. Of these only five are unmistakably
Swedish: A l m e l u n d , L i n d s t r o m , S t a r k , D a l b o , and W a l b o . A
possible addition is B r a h a m , which according to Berger is a
Swedish form of A b r a h a m . Berger also includes seven "lake-names"
like O g r e n L a k e . In a couple of places I discovered two
other names, B o d u m and V i b o . Even if one would be able to
add a Swedish name or two from manuscripts, old maps or pub­lications,
or oral tradition, these would still be surprisingly few
in an area where a very large part of the adult population even
at the beginning of the twentieth century was monolingually
Swedish, where the language of worship was Swedish, and where
children went to "Swedish School" in the summer as late as the
1920s.
The fact that the Swedish immigrants did not preserve their
national or linguistic interests during the administrative parti­tion
of the country into counties and townships (comparable to
the civil k o m m u n e r n a in Sweden) is not surprising. It was ac­complished
by the end of the 1850s, and state officials made
the partition. Chisago and Isanti Counties were divided into
25 townships, and only one bears a Swedish name: D a l b o . That
is also the name of the Swedish Lutheran Church in that com­munity,
but the origin of the name, according to Berger, is un­certain.
Other townships have purely English names like "Maple
Ridge," " F i s h Lake," and "Oxford," and still others have names
like "Wyoming" (Indian origin), "Athens," etc. Even though
Swedes in this early period were relatively the most numerous
immigrant group in Isanti-Chisago, their total number was not
great and at the outset was scattered over a sparsely populated
1 2 Regarding the history of colonization in this area, see Nelson, o p . c i t . ,
and S v e n s k G e o g r a f i s k Årsbok, 1937; also R. G[rönberge]r, S v e n s k a r n e i
S t . C r o i x - d a l e n , M i n n e s o t a (Minneapolis, 1879): and W. W. Folwell, A
H i s t o r y of M i n n e s o t a , 3 vols. (St. Paul, 1921-1926); Warren Upham, M i n n e ­s
o t a G e o g r a p h i c N a m e s (St. Paul, 1920. Collections of the Minnesota His­torical
Society, XVII).
251
wilderness where hunting, fishing, and lumbering were as im­portant
sources of livelihood as farming. An additional factor,
sociological in nature, must also be taken into account, in that
the older settlers participated only to a small extent in public
life. In an article on the large colony of Dalecarlians in Isanti
County, the Rev. Alfred Bergin writes in 1903 as follows:13
During all these years (since the 1850s) it has been left to
a few persons, especially "Yankees" from Ireland or some other
country, to assume almost all responsibilities. One looks up to
these so-called Americans with a childish trust and willingly
obeys their slightest nod. . . . In politics the Swedes on the
basis of their numerical strength have been obliged to partici­pate
even if in many instances it has been with reluctance.
But now it is different, continues Bergin. A l l officials in six town­ships
are Swedes, and in the other townships most of the official
functionaries are Swedes. In three townships all public officials
are Swedish, most of the school teachers are Swedish, etc. " In
the future the Swedish language is certain to be more generally
studied in the public schools than is now the case."
This prediction was not fulfilled. Today in this area Swedish
is a dead language in all public situations. It is spoken almost
exclusively by the elderly for their enjoyment when the con­versation
turns to Sweden or the Swedish-speaking milieu of
their childhood. During my travels there in 1966 I met people
of the third immigrant generation—the youngest was born in
1921—who freely and without American articulation and accent
spoke the dialects of Dalarne or Småland of their grandfather's
generation. But they would be the exception. The triumph of
the English language is all but complete.
The Swedish immigrant farmers during the decades after 1850
learned only as much English as was absolutely necessary; and
there was, in their daily milieu of life and work, reasonable need
for Swedish names and descriptive designations in the locale
where they settled and which they transformed in a few years
to a cultural community. Some form of "spontaneous" name-giving
supposedly did occur at this point. Was it, in this case, a
replica of the name one was accustomed to in the old home in
Sweden? Is it possible to trace the origin of a pattern of place-
Prärieblomman (Annual for 1903), (Rock Island, 111.), pp. 117 ff.
252
naming which would have been developed further if Swedish
could have survived as a minority language?14
The old homestead and village in Sweden contained a large
and richly varied treasury of place-names. The changing terrain
with lakes, streams, rises, valleys, woods, and other vegetation
provided the basis for innumerable names. The same was true
of property holdings, with infields and outlying fields, arable
land and pasture land, hayfields, etc. On the Swedish pioneer
farms in the Middle West there were not many counterparts,
especially on the prairies in states like Kansas and Nebraska,
or for that matter in the hardwood forests of Minnesota. Both
'nature and the settled community show a more uniform and less
complicated pattern. The land as a rule is flat; the monotony
is broken only by low hills, brooks and rivers, and—in Minne­sota—
an occasional lake. The monotony is accentuated by the
strict geometric pattern according to which the land is parti­tioned.
Every state is divided into a number of counties and
these in turn into townships. The township as a rule forms a
rectangular figure strictly oriented to the four points of the
compass and unrelated to nature's own lines of separation by
means of streams, lakes, and hills. Every township is divided
into 36 sections, about an English square mile (640 acres) each.
The roads follow the boundaries of the sections. Even the in­dividual
farms often follow a geometric pattern.
For the new settlers in these surroundings, such designations
as h e m m a n or gård must have seemed strange. They were re­placed
by the loan word " f a r m " 1 5 or by the Swedish word p l a t s
(English: "place"1 6 ) . The designation for n y b y g g a r e was settla¬
re (English: "settler") and for j o r d b r u k a r e it was f a r m a r e (Eng­lish:
"farmer"). The neighboring properties were commonly
called S v e n s o n s f a r m , L i n d s p l a t s , etc., or just S v e n s o n s and L i n d s .
Families with the same name would be distinguished by such
designations as P e t e r s o n s på k u l l e n ("on the hill") J o h n s o n s på
k r i c k e n ("on the creek") and C u b a O l s o n s or Cuba (Olson had
1 4 Around the turn of the century this was thought possible by Adolf
Noreen (Vårt språk, I, p. 97) et. al.
Därhemma på vå'r f a r m (Tape recording in Minnesota. Tape numbered
Am 94 in Dialekt- och folkminnesarkivet [ULMA], Uppsala, Sweden.
References below to Am 84, Am 102, etc., are all to this same Uppsala
archive).
253
visited Cuba), or also by reference to the number of the section
of land where they lived, as for example in New Gottland, Kan­sas:
P e t e r s o n i s j u a n ("Peterson in the Seventh") and P e t e r s o n
i åttan ("Peterson in the Eighth"). The customary type of place-name
from Central S w e d e n — P e r - L a r s , Erik-Ols—seems to be
rare. I heard of such a name in the oldest of our larger colonies,
Bishop Hill, Illinois (founded 1846), where one of the farms was
called J a n - J a n s . Names of church parishes were dealt with
earlier.
Even the fields which were ploughed out of virgin soil did
not keep their Swedish nomenclature; everywhere they were
called fil ("field"), f i l e n , fila, filarna, filera, and other variations.
Different parts of the farm would be called v e t e - f i l e n ("wheat
field," c o r n - f i l e r a ("corn field"). I can not remember any of
the hundreds of farmers I met using the word åker." Other parts
of the farm would be named as follows: Brä'cket o r Ny'bräcket
(from the English "break," meaning newly broken ground) ; 1 8
K l i r i n g e n or K l e r i n g e n ("clearing"), a portion of land where
one had k l i r a t ("cleared") the trees for ploughing; Förtingen
("forty" acres, 1/18 of a section) , 1 9 which the farmer often pur­chased
and annexed to his homestead; Åttingen (an "eighty"
acre piece, or x/& of a section); Låglanne ("low land"); Wick¬
manlanne (in South Dakota a piece of "land" purchased from
one whose name was Wickman); D a l e n as in n e r i d a ' l a ("down
in the hollow"); Långrumpa ("long ridge"), S t y g g u d d e n (a "bad
'"Där ä m i n h e m p l a s s — " m y homeplace" (Am 84). With reference to
the landed property itself, the word land, is used—in this case a substitu­tion
for the English "land": M e t t lann, "my land" (Am 102).
" To some extent this could be related to the fact that the Swedish åker was
used by the early immigrants as equivalent to the etymologically identical
English term of measurement, "acre." Israel Acrelius, priest in New Sweden,
Delaware, 1749-56, writes in his B e s k r i f n i n g O m D e S w e n s k a Församlingars
F o r n a o c h Närwarande Tilstånd u t i D e t s. k . N y a S v e r i g e . . . (Description
of the Former and Present Situation of the Swedish Congregations in the
so-called New Sweden . . .) (Stockholm, 1759), p. 119, about the founding
of Philadelphia on land within the old Swedish parish of Wicacoa: "The
land, 360 acres, was given for that purpose by the three brothers of the
family of Swäns Sons . . ." Later (p. 431) he writes that a neighboring
cloister in Pennsylvania "sits on about 130 acres of land (åkerland)."
Åkerland most likely here means the English "acres." Regarding åkerland
in North Swedish dialect, see F. Hedblom, N a m n o c h B y g d , 1947, p. 14.9.
1 8 V i p l a n t a d e k a ' r n där opp på brä'cket: "We planted com up there in
the clearing" (Am 97); ja feck e n kråpp kålrötter på dä ny'bräcket: "I got
a crop of rutabagas on the clearing" (Am 100).
254
point of land"); B e r g l u n d s högbacken ("level ground"); Bjork­backen
("birch h i l l " ) ; Wårmbacken ("worm h i l l " ) ; K y r k b a c k e n
(in Isanti County: "the church grounds"). The great plains
which Americans called the "prairies" became on Swedish lips
präjjan.2 0 The fenced-in pasture generally became pa'stern or
p a ' s t e r t . Only in exceptional instances have I heard the word
h a g e used.2 1 The enclosure where the cattle were kept at night
was called jä'rden ("the yard"). It was surrounded by f e ' n s et
("fence"), and the animals were i n j e n s a d e ("fenced i n " ) . This
is the only word for an enclosure (Swedish: stängsel) that I
heard; words like gärdsgård and h a g e were not appropriate to
enclosures so different from the Swedish2 2 The low-lying fields
of meadow grass along Sunrise River in Chisago County were
called Re'vermåsen or R i ' v v e r m a s e n 2 s and "lumber camp" be­came
l u m b e r k a m p e n , etc.
This sampling of names may suffice to illustrate the fact that
within the Swedish farming communities there were various
names, especially nature names, of genuine Swedish character,
but the descriptive vocabulary in the immigrant's language, which
should have provided the basis for a nomenclature according to
the model of the country districts in Sweden, was partly stymied
and partly influenced by the English language. The unfamiliar
aspect of the physical surroundings was difficult to accommo­date
to the tenor of Swedish words, and the utterly simplified
partitioning reduced the need for distinguishing names and ap-
10 V i s k a u t på förtingen ("We're going out to the Forty"), or östra
förtingen (East Forty"), or sö'nnre f o r t i n g e n ("South Forty") as the case
may be (South Dakota, author's own recording).
20 Västra präjan, Minnesota. See Nelson, o p . c i t . , p. 230. Smålänska präj­j
a n , Burnet County, Wisconsin. The name was later changed to " A l ­pha,"
after a milk separator (Am 242). The suffix - a n should prob­ably
be grouped with names like Sätran, K u m l a n , V a s a n . See F. Hedblom,
D e s v e n s k a o r t n a m n e n på säter, pp. 164 ff.
21 Därhemma v a r h a l v e f a r m e n i hage ("Back home, half of the farm
was in pasture"); släppte . . . ut d o m i h a g e n ("let them out to pasture").
Minnesota (Am 95).
2 2 A common type of fence in Minnesota was kro'kfeuset. It consisted
of tree trunks laid on one another at an angle. See the illustration in
P e h r K a l m s r e s a till N o r r a A m e r i k a , III. (About 1750. Skrifter utgivna av
Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, CXX, p. 15.)
2 8 For å and bäck the loanwords r i ' v v e r ("river") k r i c k ("creek") are
used almost exclusively. On the other hand, sjö ("lake") is retained:
över sjöarna å över r e ' v e r n ("over the lakes and over the river"), Min­nesota
(Am 100). However, in combined place-names it is usually "Lake,"
as in "Oskar Lake," and "Lake Rosen."
255
pellations. The immigrant's language came to be marked, in the
same way as his life style, by a radical oversimplification of cul­tural
patterns. His first home was a cave, a log cabin, or a sod
house; his furniture and tools were simple, crude, and unembel¬
lished. Many words and expressions in the language he brought
with him from Sweden were superfluous.2 4 On the other hand,
he encountered new conditions which forced him to borrow from
the language of his new home. His borrowings included even
the most common words in the farmer's daily life, like f a r m and
fil, r i v v e r and Erick. Even differences in Swedish dialects be­tween
neighbors had their effect; uncertainty with respect to
which Swedish expression was the correct one led to adoption
of the English equivalent.2 5 In most areas, with the exception of
the religious, one lived under the constant pressure of one lan­guage
and one culture which appeared to be superior, a pressure
which was all the more effective inasmuch as the bulk of the
immigrants did not come from the leading social and cultural
strata in Sweden, but quite the reverse. They did not come in
order to set themselves up as lords of the land but to create
for everyone a better existence in a free society about whose
governance at the outset they were not concerned. They were
also not disposed to isolate themselves but kept in open commun­ications
with their environment, which gradually led to the social,
cultural, and linguistic assimilation that is now all but complete.26
This process, especially the shift in language, had the result that
the relatively few names and designations, which were strongly
influenced by English and which prevailed on the farms and
their vicinity, disappeared without opposition. These names now
exist only in the memory of the older Swedish-speaking people
2 1 The pervasive significance of cultural simplification in immigrant com­munities
has been strongly underscored by E. Haugen in N o r s k i A m e r i k a .
pp. 28 ff., and later in his large work, T h e N o r w e g i a n L a n g u a g e i n A m e r i c a ,
2 vols., 1953. Comparable views on the simplification of cultural forms
("functional and social retreat") in remote communities have been cited
by D. Trotzig in the treatise, Slagan (Stockholm, 1943), Nordiska Museets
Handlingar, XVII, p. 113 f., and by J . Granlund in the essay, O x e n , o k et
o c h smålänningen (Hyltén-Cavellius-föreningens Årsbok 1943). I am grate­ful
to Professor Granlund for kindly informing me about this.
2 S See F. Hedblom in S v e n s k a Landsmål, 1964. p. 17 passim.
""Regarding efforts within more enlightened circles to preserve and but­tress
the Swedish language, see N. Hasselmo, "Language in Exile," in T h e
S w e d i s h I m m i g r a n t C o m m u n i t y in T r a n s i t i o n , 1963, pp. 121 ff.
256
or are preserved in English translations where L a n g r u m p a be­comes
"Long T a i l " and S t y g g b a c k e n becomes "Bad Point."
Comparable conditions have obtained within related immi­grant
groups, especially the Norwegian, whose place-names have
been researched by Haugen and Cassidy. The latter's inven­tory
of place-names in Dane county, Wisconsin,2 7 where the Nor­wegian
element in the population is especially strong, accounts
for a total of 11 Norwegian place-names out of 1,553 that were
investigated. With respect to official names (post offices, com­munities,
etc.) the Norwegians in Minnesota have nevertheless
maintained their national interest more than twice as well as
the Swedes, while the Danes had difficulty coming up with ten
names.2 8 Among the Scandinavians the Icelanders in North Da­kota
and Manitoba have managed the best. This coincides well
with Haugen's observation about the different rates of assimila­tion
among the Scandinavian groups.29
It would be interesting to broaden the comparison to other
immigrant groups, but this would carry us too far, especially
since the necessary documents are lacking or are difficult to ob­tain.
It should be added, however, that the American attitude
toward place-names from foreign language groups as a rule has
been generous. A known example is New York, where, when
the city was seized from the Dutch in 1664, only the name of
the city itself—Nieuw Amsterdam—was changed; the large sec­tions
like Brooklyn, Harlem, Yonkers, and others continue to
retain their Dutch names.
The period of time which allowed for "spontaneous" place-naming
in Swedish was short in most places, at best not more
than 50 to 60 years. In one case, at least, it has been consider­ably
longer. The Swedish colony of New Sweden in the Dela­ware
River Valley was founded in 1638 when the first shipload
of colonists set foot on land and the area was occupied for the
Swedish crown. However, Sweden could not maintain its posi­tion
as a colonial power in America for more than 17 years. New
Sweden was seized by the Dutch in 1655 and by the English in
2 7 F. Cassidy, T h e P l a c e - N a m e s of D a n e C o u n t y , W i s c o n s i n (Publication
of the American Dialect Society, VII).
2 8 Roy W. Swanson, "Scandinavian Place-Names in the American Dane­law,"
in S w e d i s h - A m e r i c a n H i s t o r i c a l B u l l e t i n , II: 3, p. 14.
2 0 Haugen, T h e N o r w e g i a n L a n g u a g e , I, pp. 228 f., 279 ff.
257
l
1664, but the Swedish language survived there for more than a
century, and the Swedish crown continued to send priests to
hold Swedish services. The last of these, appointed by Gustaf
III, died in 1831. We know that significant numbers of Swedish
place-names were located in New Sweden by means of the maps
that were drawn up during the last years of the colony by the
surveyor, Per Lindeström.3 0 The names were partly Christian
names like C h r i s t i n a s k a n s , P r i n t z h o f (residence for Governor
Printz), Nya Älvsborg, and partly spontaneous names like B a s t e
C r e e k ("Bathhouse Creek"), F i s k e k i l e n (a stream),3 1 T i m m e r ­ön,
T r a n e u d d e n , L i l l e f a l l s k i l e n (a stream), etc. In addition
there were Indian and Dutch names that the Swedes sometimes
accommodated to their own terminology and sometimes trans­lated.
For example, F u r u u d d e n ("Pine Point") was the transla­tion
of the Indian Koijäkä.3' It is often precarious to determine
what is primary and what is secondary in such a transference;
one meets the same common problems with respect to place-names
everywhere in America. The Swedish names about which
we can be reasonably certain are sufficiently numerous to dem­onstrate
that in New Sweden the right conditions existed for
giving nature names of the Swedish variety, but also that the
Swedish place-names had been considerably influenced by the
Dutch and English environment. Not many names had been
kept in use until our time after the decline of the Swedish lan­guage
in the Delaware Valley. O. R. Landelius3 3 has called at-
3 0 Amandus Johnson, T h e S w e d i s h S e t t l e m e n t s o n t h e D e l a w a r e , 1 6 3 8 -
1664, II. Lindeström's map is produced in facsimile opposite p. 514. (Cf.
also, among others, Per Lindeström, Resa till N y a S v e r i g e , edited by Alf
Åberg.)
3 1 The generic - k i l in this and other Swedish names in New Sweden could
well have come about under the influence of the Dutch k i l ("stream"), of
uncertain origin. See W o o r d e n b o e k d e r N e d e r l a n d s c h e Taal, K I L (II)
with references. Cf. Swedish k i l in place-names like L y s e k i l , et. al. See,
among others, O r t n a m n e n i Göteborgs o c h B o h u s län, II, p. 131.
3 2 A. R. Dunlap, D u t c h and S w e d i s h P l a c e - N a m e s in D e l a w a r e , pp. 29 ff.
See also the review by G. Franzén in Scandinavian Studies, XXIX: 3, pp.
142 ff.
3 3 O. R. Landelius, "Some Extant Swedish Geographic Names in the
Delaware Region," in T h e S w e d i s h P i o n e e r H i s t o r i c a l Q u a r t e r l y , IX: 4, pp.
124 ff. Landelius does not mention Upland, which is found on modern maps
as a western part of the city of Chester, between Wilmington and Phila­delphia
(see, for example, the map in Esther Chilstrom Meixner, S w e d i sh
(Landmarks i n t h e D e l a w a r e V a l l e y ) . The name is found in the same
location on Lindeström's map (see Amandus Johnson, op. cit., II, opposite
p. 514: Vplandh and Vplandhkijlen). According to Johnson (op. e i t , I, p.
258
tention to nine names in the Philadelphia-Wilmington area:
"Christina River," "Christiana" (a village), "Shellpot Creek"
(Swedish: Sköldpadde, meaning "turtle"), "Cobbs Creek" (from
the family name K a b b ) , "Garret Road" (after the Swedish
proper name, Gäret), "Longacre Boulevard" (Swedish farm
name, Långåker), "Morton" (a town after the Swedish proper
name Mårtensson), "Mullica H i l l " and "Mullica River" (after
E r i k M u l l i c a , a Finn from Hälsingland).
The Scandinavian immigrants' contribution to modern Amer­ica's
treasury of place-names is not significant, whether one views
it quantitatively or qualitatively. But it is nevertheless interesting
to study these names and the linguistic and communal condi­tions
which constitute their background and which are close
enough in time for us to follow them in detail. Just as the study
of modern dialects casts a light on linguistic changes in the past,
this more recent Scandinavian process of name-giving in a strange
environment could illuminate in certain respects the problems
which always arise concerning place-names at the point of "lan­guage
contact."
The most obvious example would be the tremendous extent
of Scandinavian place-names on British and French soil during
the Viking period. Just as in America, the invaders encountered
a native population whose language and prevailing culture —
especially in Normandy — soon assimilated them. The fact that
they still left such an extensive system of place-names — and
in addition a number of loan words in English and French dialects
— does not seem at first to depend, as some would like to think,34
on their number, but rather on their having dominated the po­litical
and social situation over a long period of time, giving them
the opportunity to determine and establish a pattern of place-
307 passim) a Swedish fort and plantations were found there. He assumes
that the place was named after the Uppland province in Sweden. Mean­while
the name is found in various places in America and includes in
many cases the English "upland," a word which even appears as a loan
word in American Swedish: å p p l a n n , a highly situated land-area (ULMA
Am 102). Dunlap mentions only a Dutch F o r t Oplandt, which he does not
link to Upland. The latter is also treated by Ruth L . Pearce, "Welsh Place-
Names in Southeastern Pennsylvania," in N a m e s , XI, pp. 37 f. In Welsh
it has become U w c h l a n.
3 4 See, for ex., Skautrup, op. cit., p. 98.
259
naming that weathered the changes in language and survived
until our time.
This is more than the Swedish-Americans of the nineteenth
century could accomplish. Place-names, "the most enduring cre­ations
of human thought," are still, along with some surnames,35
the only aspect of their language which they bequeathed to con­temporary
America. The American language has not deliberately
adopted from the Swedish language more than the loan word
"smorgasbord," but that, at least, is well known across the whole
continent!3 6
See, among others, Roy W. Swanson, "The Swedish Surname in Amer­ica,"
in A m e r i c a n S p e e c h , III, pp. 468 ff.
3 0 In passing one should mention the Swedish loan word o m b u d s m a n,
which has been introduced directly from Sweden in recent years. It is an
American equivalent to the Swedish j u s t i t i e o m b u d s m a n . Regarding the
appointment of an "ombudsman" in New York, see the article in D a g e n s N y ­h
e t e r , Nov. 13, 1966, p. 17, by S. Åhman.
260

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PLACE-NAMES IN IMMIGRANT COMMUNITIES
Concerning the Giving of Swedish Place-Names
in America
F O L K E H E D B L OM
Translated by W E S L E Y W E S T E R B E RG
Where history is silent, the land itself often speaks through
the names of its rivers and mountains, its villages and farms.
Place-names are without question to be counted among the
most enduring creations of human thought.
E S A I A S TEGNÉR, the Younger, U r språkens värld, I I I.
Swedish emigration to North America during the latter half
of the nineteenth century is without comparison the greatest in
the history of Sweden. Approximately 1.3 million Swedes—a
significant part of the nation's population—sailed over the At­lantic
and established new homes for themselves and their fami­lies
in the far-flung territory of the West. Compared with this
folk migration, earlier emigrations from Scandinavia, like the
Viking invasions of Normandy and of the British isles, appear
almost insignificant. If on the other hand we were to assume for
the sake of argument that nothing would be known in the future
about Swedish colonization in America except what is derived
from place-names, the comparison would be otherwise. The mi­gration
to the New World would then seem to be a relatively
minor episode.
It is a known fact that there are a good many Swedish names
on the map of modern America. An annotated list made by the
American-Swedish writer, Vilhelm Berger, was published in
N a m n o c h B y g d , III (1938). The list seems to be representative
and fairly complete. Even if various names could be added here
and there, they would not distort the overall picture either of
the character of the treasury of American-Swedish place-names
246
that have been preserved or of its relative size and geographical
distribution.1
Berger accounts for a total of approximately 225 different
names. The same names appear in several places, for example,
Stockholm, Vasa, New Sweden, et al. The number of places with
Swedish names in the United States and Canada is about 300.2
In Normandy alone the number of Scandinavian place-names
far exceeds this figure. Names which include t o m t or t o f t , as in­vestigated
by Bengt Holmberg, add up to 346.3 No accurate count
is available on other names with Scandinavian origin. Still more
numerous are the Scandinavian place-names in England and
Scotland and the other British islands.4 They could well num­ber
in the thousands. Even if one takes into consideration the
fact that the frequency of place-names in America is in general
less than in Europe,5 this comparison would show that there
is no direct, simple connection between the number of immi­grants
and the number of place-names they bequeathed to pos­terity.
"According to information in L. ljungmark, D e n s t o r a u t v a n d r i n g e n (The
Great Emigration, a textbook for Sveriges Radio, Stockholm, 1965), pp.
139 ff. O. R. Landelius, Göteborg author, has an unpublished collection of
more than 800 place-names of Swedish origin in America. Included in it also
are various Swedish names which have been given by Americans in an
American setting and therefore do not indicate Swedish residence. The
place-names referred to by Ljungmark are in all cases the same type as
the names in Berger's list. Some additional names of the same kind are
found in E . Gustav Johnson, "The Study of American Place-Names of
Swedish Origin," in C o v e n a n t Q u a r t e r l y , Nov., 1946, and in his "Place-
Names and Swedish Pioneers," in B u l l e t i n o j T h e A m e r i c a n S w e d i s h I n ­s
t i t u t e , Minneapolis, Vol. V , No. 3, Sept. 1950.
approximate figures, including even names of churches, children's homes,
etc., in cities. It is often uncertain, from an American point of view, what
should be regarded as duplication, as for example: Alfsborg, Elfsborg, Ells-b
u r g , named for Älvsborg in Sweden.
SB. Holmberg, "Tomt och toft som appelativ och ortnamnselement," and
literature cited in S k r i f t e r u t g i v n a a v K u n g l . G u s t a v A d o l f s A k a d e m i e n,
XVII. See also: J . A . des Gautries, "Les noms de personnes scandinaves
en Normandie de 911 å 1066," N o m i n a G e r m a n i c a , XI, and literature cited.
"In Lincolnshire alone there are c. 250 names ending in - b y and over
100 ending in - t o r p , according to P. Skautrup, D e t D a n s k e S p r o g s H i s t o r ie
(History of the Danish Language), I, pp. 99ff. See also especially Harald
Lindkvist, M i d d l e - E n g l i s h P l a c e - N a m e s of S c a n d i n a v i a n O r i g i n , I; E.
Björkman in N a m n o c h B y g d , 1, pp. 80ff.; E. Ekwall, "The Scandinavian
Element," in E n g l i s h P l a c e - N a m e S o c i e t y , I; and A . H. Smith, "English
Place-Name Elements," Parts 1, 2, in E n g l i s h P l a c e - N a m e S o c i e t y , X X V -
VI. For Scotland see, among others, articles by W. F . H . Nicolaisen in
S c o t t i s h S t u d i e s.
"George R. Stewart, N a m e s o n t h e L a n d (New York, 1945; rev. ed., Boston,
1958), pp. 418, 444. See also Georgacas's review in N a m e s , VIII, p. 91.
247
The area settled by Swedes in the United States extends es­sentially
all the way across the northern part of the country.
The Southern states, except for Kansas and Texas, with their
warm climate did not attract the Swedes. The densest agglomera­tion
of Swedish immigrants around the turn of the century
occurred in the North Central states: northern Illinois, Min­nesota,
Nebraska, and Michigan. Other strong concentrations
of Swedes are to be found in the East—in the New York-Boston
area, in the western corner of the state of New York and ad­joining
districts—and in the Pacific Northwest. To these areas
must be added the neighboring provinces of Canada. Swedish
settlements occur more sporadically in intervening states. •
By superimposing on a map the place-names catalogued by
Berger, the picture of Swedish settlement is shown more clearly
concentrated in the upper Middle West and more specifically
Minnesota. More than one-third of all the names are found in
this state. Illinois, which taken as a whole has more Swedes
than Minnesota, turns up only five names, and the large Swedish
population in the East and the far West only a few names.
The explanation of this sharp difference between Minnesota
and Illinois, for example, is obviously to be found in the differ­ent
types of settlements. In Minnesota Swedes were a rural people
and in Illinois they were urban. Swallowed up by such metrop­olises
as Chicago, Rockford, Rock Island, Moline, and others, the
immigrants did not contribute place-names aside from sporadic
names for churches, homes for the aged, and similar institutions.
In 1930,6 46.1% of the Minnesota Swedes lived in the country,
but in Illinois the rural population comprised only 13.8% of first-and
second-generation Swedes. In terms of the strictly "rural-farm"
population, the figures are 32.5 and 7% respectively. Even
in the West Coast states and in the East the relative number
of city dwellers is large. Whether or not a group of immigrants
generates place-names depends on the type of settlement, al­though
other factors are also involved.
The Swedish names which have survived on American maps
strike the researcher as repetitious and meager. Approximately
"Statistical information from H. Nelson, T h e S w e d e s and t h e S w e d i s h
S e t t l e m e n t s i n N o r t h A m e r i c a , 2 vols. (Skrifter utgivna av Kungliga H u ­manistiska
Vetenskapssamfundet i Lund), XXXVII.
248
one-third of them are names of places in Sweden: S t o c k h o l m,
F a l u n , M a l m o , B o x h o l m , S m o l a n , etc. The next largest group
comprises adapted Swedish surnames like C a r l s o n , E r i c k s o n,
D a h l g r e n , H o l m q u i s t , or Christian names like E r i c k , O s c a r , M a n ­d
a , O l i v i a . Even nature names follow the same pattern: B l o om
L a k e , S k o g m a n L a k e , L a k e O s c a r , E r i c s s o n P e a k e , P o i n t S t o c k ­h
o l m . The "generics"7 in these latter names are borrowed from
the English. The same is true with compound settlement names
like H a n s o n v i l l e , M u n t e r v i l l e , and Palm Valley. Strict Swedish
combinations have often been anglicized; along with L i n d s b o r g
and M a r i a d a l can be found S w a n b u r g , and E r i c k s d a l e . The
spelling is sometimes adapted to English pronunciation: L a r s s on
to L a w s o n , V a s a to W a u s a . Difficult sound sequences are avoided
by transposing to corresponding words or forms in English:
B i s k o p s k u l l a to "Bishop H i l l , " N y a S v e r i g e to "New Sweden."
Such names in our context must be considered Swedish in spite
of the form; they have been applied in most cases by Swedes
themselves. Biblical names also appear, as a rule, in connection
with churches and congregations: B e t a n i a , S a l e m s b o r g . In some
places a congregation has been divided into districts; in Vasa,
Minnesota, were found K y r k r o t e n , Göta r o t e n , Skåne, Väster­b
o t t e n , et al.8
These types of name-giving follow the pattern that was cus­tomary
in nineteenth-century America and was inherited from
colonial times. Both the native Americans and the immigrants
from different countries gave their new settlements place-names
or proper names taken from the old country: C a m b r i d g e , P a r i s,
T o l e d o , L i n c o l n , B i s m a r c k , T h o m a s . Generics like - b u r g and
- v i l l e were popular at times and were combined with "specifics"
from different languages.9 For the Swedes, this type of name-giving
was well known from the homeland. New settlements in
Norrland, in the northern part of Sweden, received names like
Småland and S i b i r i e n , and parishes received names like G u s t av
'Swedish place-name research lacks internationally applicable terms
for förled and e f t e r l e d . American researchers use "specifics" and "generics."
See Stewart, op. cit., p. 452, with references, and the journal N a m e s .
"E. Norelius, V a s a I l l u s t r a t a , p. 189.
"Stewart, o p . c i t . See distribution charts opposite p. 257. O. Springer,
"Ortsnamen in der Neuen Welt" (Place-names in the New World), in
G e r m . - R o m a n . M o n a t s s c h r i f t , XXI, pp. 125 ff.
249
A d o l f a n d V i l h e l m i n a . 1 0
Common to these Swedish names in America is the fact that
they arose from a deliberate attempt to fix names; places were
"christened." Most of the non-Indian names on the map originated
in the same way. The question then arises: Was there also, at
least within the larger settlements out in the country, any spon­taneous
name-giving of the common variety with Swedish noun,
adjective, name of person, etc., as root—in other words, an un­conscious
name-giving as occurred in the Danelaw in England?
The largest and most numerous of the strictly Swedish farming
communities where our emigrants could most easily preserve
their language and their own life style were found after 1850
in the virgin farmlands near the upper Mississippi River Valley
and its tributaries. During the latter part of the nineteenth cen­tury,
in such states as Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska,
arose a series of pioneer communities which in older times were
called "settlements" and to which Swedes immigrated in large
numbers. Here the Swedes were from the outset a safe major­ity,
and the Swedish language was dominant for a long time.
None of these settlements, however, has offered more favorable
advantages for the use of Swedish names than the adjacent areas
which form the largest part of both Chisago and Isanti Coun­ties
in Minnesota, northeast of the Twin Cities. Both of these
counties together covered an area of 2,223 square kilometers,
comparable to almost half of Uppsala län.1 1 In 1910 the Swedes
comprised 75% of the population. From my experience traveling
in most sections of Swedish-America, I know that the Swedish
language—especially our folk dialect—has nowhere been main­tained
so well into the third immigrant generation as here. For
the most part the Swedes in this area have been farmers living
strictly in the country or in very small communities. The largest
place is the town of Cambridge with 1,183 inhabitants (1930).
Before Swedish immigration began in 1851—primarily from Da¬
larna, Hälsingland, and Småland—there were only a few insig­nificant
scattered settlements. The land had not yet been sur-
1 0 A . Noreen, "Moderna Bostadnamn" in N a m n o c h B y g d , 1915, pp. 1 ff.
Regarding Nordic transferred names see also K. Hald, V o r e s t e d n a v n e,
Copenhagen, 1950, pp. 194 ff. and, with respect to England, A . Janzen in
N a m e s , V, p. 98.
1 1 Nelson, op. c i t . , II, pp. 29-30.
250
veyed. It was part of the huge triangle-shaped wilderness which
the Indians handed over to the U . S. Government in 1837-38."
Here one could reasonably expect to find a strong concentration
of Swedish place-names.
But this is not the case. Scanning the modern well-detailed road
maps of Minnesota, one finds within these two counties altogether
about 45 place-names. Of these only five are unmistakably
Swedish: A l m e l u n d , L i n d s t r o m , S t a r k , D a l b o , and W a l b o . A
possible addition is B r a h a m , which according to Berger is a
Swedish form of A b r a h a m . Berger also includes seven "lake-names"
like O g r e n L a k e . In a couple of places I discovered two
other names, B o d u m and V i b o . Even if one would be able to
add a Swedish name or two from manuscripts, old maps or pub­lications,
or oral tradition, these would still be surprisingly few
in an area where a very large part of the adult population even
at the beginning of the twentieth century was monolingually
Swedish, where the language of worship was Swedish, and where
children went to "Swedish School" in the summer as late as the
1920s.
The fact that the Swedish immigrants did not preserve their
national or linguistic interests during the administrative parti­tion
of the country into counties and townships (comparable to
the civil k o m m u n e r n a in Sweden) is not surprising. It was ac­complished
by the end of the 1850s, and state officials made
the partition. Chisago and Isanti Counties were divided into
25 townships, and only one bears a Swedish name: D a l b o . That
is also the name of the Swedish Lutheran Church in that com­munity,
but the origin of the name, according to Berger, is un­certain.
Other townships have purely English names like "Maple
Ridge," " F i s h Lake," and "Oxford," and still others have names
like "Wyoming" (Indian origin), "Athens," etc. Even though
Swedes in this early period were relatively the most numerous
immigrant group in Isanti-Chisago, their total number was not
great and at the outset was scattered over a sparsely populated
1 2 Regarding the history of colonization in this area, see Nelson, o p . c i t . ,
and S v e n s k G e o g r a f i s k Årsbok, 1937; also R. G[rönberge]r, S v e n s k a r n e i
S t . C r o i x - d a l e n , M i n n e s o t a (Minneapolis, 1879): and W. W. Folwell, A
H i s t o r y of M i n n e s o t a , 3 vols. (St. Paul, 1921-1926); Warren Upham, M i n n e ­s
o t a G e o g r a p h i c N a m e s (St. Paul, 1920. Collections of the Minnesota His­torical
Society, XVII).
251
wilderness where hunting, fishing, and lumbering were as im­portant
sources of livelihood as farming. An additional factor,
sociological in nature, must also be taken into account, in that
the older settlers participated only to a small extent in public
life. In an article on the large colony of Dalecarlians in Isanti
County, the Rev. Alfred Bergin writes in 1903 as follows:13
During all these years (since the 1850s) it has been left to
a few persons, especially "Yankees" from Ireland or some other
country, to assume almost all responsibilities. One looks up to
these so-called Americans with a childish trust and willingly
obeys their slightest nod. . . . In politics the Swedes on the
basis of their numerical strength have been obliged to partici­pate
even if in many instances it has been with reluctance.
But now it is different, continues Bergin. A l l officials in six town­ships
are Swedes, and in the other townships most of the official
functionaries are Swedes. In three townships all public officials
are Swedish, most of the school teachers are Swedish, etc. " In
the future the Swedish language is certain to be more generally
studied in the public schools than is now the case."
This prediction was not fulfilled. Today in this area Swedish
is a dead language in all public situations. It is spoken almost
exclusively by the elderly for their enjoyment when the con­versation
turns to Sweden or the Swedish-speaking milieu of
their childhood. During my travels there in 1966 I met people
of the third immigrant generation—the youngest was born in
1921—who freely and without American articulation and accent
spoke the dialects of Dalarne or Småland of their grandfather's
generation. But they would be the exception. The triumph of
the English language is all but complete.
The Swedish immigrant farmers during the decades after 1850
learned only as much English as was absolutely necessary; and
there was, in their daily milieu of life and work, reasonable need
for Swedish names and descriptive designations in the locale
where they settled and which they transformed in a few years
to a cultural community. Some form of "spontaneous" name-giving
supposedly did occur at this point. Was it, in this case, a
replica of the name one was accustomed to in the old home in
Sweden? Is it possible to trace the origin of a pattern of place-
Prärieblomman (Annual for 1903), (Rock Island, 111.), pp. 117 ff.
252
naming which would have been developed further if Swedish
could have survived as a minority language?14
The old homestead and village in Sweden contained a large
and richly varied treasury of place-names. The changing terrain
with lakes, streams, rises, valleys, woods, and other vegetation
provided the basis for innumerable names. The same was true
of property holdings, with infields and outlying fields, arable
land and pasture land, hayfields, etc. On the Swedish pioneer
farms in the Middle West there were not many counterparts,
especially on the prairies in states like Kansas and Nebraska,
or for that matter in the hardwood forests of Minnesota. Both
'nature and the settled community show a more uniform and less
complicated pattern. The land as a rule is flat; the monotony
is broken only by low hills, brooks and rivers, and—in Minne­sota—
an occasional lake. The monotony is accentuated by the
strict geometric pattern according to which the land is parti­tioned.
Every state is divided into a number of counties and
these in turn into townships. The township as a rule forms a
rectangular figure strictly oriented to the four points of the
compass and unrelated to nature's own lines of separation by
means of streams, lakes, and hills. Every township is divided
into 36 sections, about an English square mile (640 acres) each.
The roads follow the boundaries of the sections. Even the in­dividual
farms often follow a geometric pattern.
For the new settlers in these surroundings, such designations
as h e m m a n or gård must have seemed strange. They were re­placed
by the loan word " f a r m " 1 5 or by the Swedish word p l a t s
(English: "place"1 6 ) . The designation for n y b y g g a r e was settla¬
re (English: "settler") and for j o r d b r u k a r e it was f a r m a r e (Eng­lish:
"farmer"). The neighboring properties were commonly
called S v e n s o n s f a r m , L i n d s p l a t s , etc., or just S v e n s o n s and L i n d s .
Families with the same name would be distinguished by such
designations as P e t e r s o n s på k u l l e n ("on the hill") J o h n s o n s på
k r i c k e n ("on the creek") and C u b a O l s o n s or Cuba (Olson had
1 4 Around the turn of the century this was thought possible by Adolf
Noreen (Vårt språk, I, p. 97) et. al.
Därhemma på vå'r f a r m (Tape recording in Minnesota. Tape numbered
Am 94 in Dialekt- och folkminnesarkivet [ULMA], Uppsala, Sweden.
References below to Am 84, Am 102, etc., are all to this same Uppsala
archive).
253
visited Cuba), or also by reference to the number of the section
of land where they lived, as for example in New Gottland, Kan­sas:
P e t e r s o n i s j u a n ("Peterson in the Seventh") and P e t e r s o n
i åttan ("Peterson in the Eighth"). The customary type of place-name
from Central S w e d e n — P e r - L a r s , Erik-Ols—seems to be
rare. I heard of such a name in the oldest of our larger colonies,
Bishop Hill, Illinois (founded 1846), where one of the farms was
called J a n - J a n s . Names of church parishes were dealt with
earlier.
Even the fields which were ploughed out of virgin soil did
not keep their Swedish nomenclature; everywhere they were
called fil ("field"), f i l e n , fila, filarna, filera, and other variations.
Different parts of the farm would be called v e t e - f i l e n ("wheat
field," c o r n - f i l e r a ("corn field"). I can not remember any of
the hundreds of farmers I met using the word åker." Other parts
of the farm would be named as follows: Brä'cket o r Ny'bräcket
(from the English "break," meaning newly broken ground) ; 1 8
K l i r i n g e n or K l e r i n g e n ("clearing"), a portion of land where
one had k l i r a t ("cleared") the trees for ploughing; Förtingen
("forty" acres, 1/18 of a section) , 1 9 which the farmer often pur­chased
and annexed to his homestead; Åttingen (an "eighty"
acre piece, or x/& of a section); Låglanne ("low land"); Wick¬
manlanne (in South Dakota a piece of "land" purchased from
one whose name was Wickman); D a l e n as in n e r i d a ' l a ("down
in the hollow"); Långrumpa ("long ridge"), S t y g g u d d e n (a "bad
'"Där ä m i n h e m p l a s s — " m y homeplace" (Am 84). With reference to
the landed property itself, the word land, is used—in this case a substitu­tion
for the English "land": M e t t lann, "my land" (Am 102).
" To some extent this could be related to the fact that the Swedish åker was
used by the early immigrants as equivalent to the etymologically identical
English term of measurement, "acre." Israel Acrelius, priest in New Sweden,
Delaware, 1749-56, writes in his B e s k r i f n i n g O m D e S w e n s k a Församlingars
F o r n a o c h Närwarande Tilstånd u t i D e t s. k . N y a S v e r i g e . . . (Description
of the Former and Present Situation of the Swedish Congregations in the
so-called New Sweden . . .) (Stockholm, 1759), p. 119, about the founding
of Philadelphia on land within the old Swedish parish of Wicacoa: "The
land, 360 acres, was given for that purpose by the three brothers of the
family of Swäns Sons . . ." Later (p. 431) he writes that a neighboring
cloister in Pennsylvania "sits on about 130 acres of land (åkerland)."
Åkerland most likely here means the English "acres." Regarding åkerland
in North Swedish dialect, see F. Hedblom, N a m n o c h B y g d , 1947, p. 14.9.
1 8 V i p l a n t a d e k a ' r n där opp på brä'cket: "We planted com up there in
the clearing" (Am 97); ja feck e n kråpp kålrötter på dä ny'bräcket: "I got
a crop of rutabagas on the clearing" (Am 100).
254
point of land"); B e r g l u n d s högbacken ("level ground"); Bjork­backen
("birch h i l l " ) ; Wårmbacken ("worm h i l l " ) ; K y r k b a c k e n
(in Isanti County: "the church grounds"). The great plains
which Americans called the "prairies" became on Swedish lips
präjjan.2 0 The fenced-in pasture generally became pa'stern or
p a ' s t e r t . Only in exceptional instances have I heard the word
h a g e used.2 1 The enclosure where the cattle were kept at night
was called jä'rden ("the yard"). It was surrounded by f e ' n s et
("fence"), and the animals were i n j e n s a d e ("fenced i n " ) . This
is the only word for an enclosure (Swedish: stängsel) that I
heard; words like gärdsgård and h a g e were not appropriate to
enclosures so different from the Swedish2 2 The low-lying fields
of meadow grass along Sunrise River in Chisago County were
called Re'vermåsen or R i ' v v e r m a s e n 2 s and "lumber camp" be­came
l u m b e r k a m p e n , etc.
This sampling of names may suffice to illustrate the fact that
within the Swedish farming communities there were various
names, especially nature names, of genuine Swedish character,
but the descriptive vocabulary in the immigrant's language, which
should have provided the basis for a nomenclature according to
the model of the country districts in Sweden, was partly stymied
and partly influenced by the English language. The unfamiliar
aspect of the physical surroundings was difficult to accommo­date
to the tenor of Swedish words, and the utterly simplified
partitioning reduced the need for distinguishing names and ap-
10 V i s k a u t på förtingen ("We're going out to the Forty"), or östra
förtingen (East Forty"), or sö'nnre f o r t i n g e n ("South Forty") as the case
may be (South Dakota, author's own recording).
20 Västra präjan, Minnesota. See Nelson, o p . c i t . , p. 230. Smålänska präj­j
a n , Burnet County, Wisconsin. The name was later changed to " A l ­pha,"
after a milk separator (Am 242). The suffix - a n should prob­ably
be grouped with names like Sätran, K u m l a n , V a s a n . See F. Hedblom,
D e s v e n s k a o r t n a m n e n på säter, pp. 164 ff.
21 Därhemma v a r h a l v e f a r m e n i hage ("Back home, half of the farm
was in pasture"); släppte . . . ut d o m i h a g e n ("let them out to pasture").
Minnesota (Am 95).
2 2 A common type of fence in Minnesota was kro'kfeuset. It consisted
of tree trunks laid on one another at an angle. See the illustration in
P e h r K a l m s r e s a till N o r r a A m e r i k a , III. (About 1750. Skrifter utgivna av
Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, CXX, p. 15.)
2 8 For å and bäck the loanwords r i ' v v e r ("river") k r i c k ("creek") are
used almost exclusively. On the other hand, sjö ("lake") is retained:
över sjöarna å över r e ' v e r n ("over the lakes and over the river"), Min­nesota
(Am 100). However, in combined place-names it is usually "Lake,"
as in "Oskar Lake," and "Lake Rosen."
255
pellations. The immigrant's language came to be marked, in the
same way as his life style, by a radical oversimplification of cul­tural
patterns. His first home was a cave, a log cabin, or a sod
house; his furniture and tools were simple, crude, and unembel¬
lished. Many words and expressions in the language he brought
with him from Sweden were superfluous.2 4 On the other hand,
he encountered new conditions which forced him to borrow from
the language of his new home. His borrowings included even
the most common words in the farmer's daily life, like f a r m and
fil, r i v v e r and Erick. Even differences in Swedish dialects be­tween
neighbors had their effect; uncertainty with respect to
which Swedish expression was the correct one led to adoption
of the English equivalent.2 5 In most areas, with the exception of
the religious, one lived under the constant pressure of one lan­guage
and one culture which appeared to be superior, a pressure
which was all the more effective inasmuch as the bulk of the
immigrants did not come from the leading social and cultural
strata in Sweden, but quite the reverse. They did not come in
order to set themselves up as lords of the land but to create
for everyone a better existence in a free society about whose
governance at the outset they were not concerned. They were
also not disposed to isolate themselves but kept in open commun­ications
with their environment, which gradually led to the social,
cultural, and linguistic assimilation that is now all but complete.26
This process, especially the shift in language, had the result that
the relatively few names and designations, which were strongly
influenced by English and which prevailed on the farms and
their vicinity, disappeared without opposition. These names now
exist only in the memory of the older Swedish-speaking people
2 1 The pervasive significance of cultural simplification in immigrant com­munities
has been strongly underscored by E. Haugen in N o r s k i A m e r i k a .
pp. 28 ff., and later in his large work, T h e N o r w e g i a n L a n g u a g e i n A m e r i c a ,
2 vols., 1953. Comparable views on the simplification of cultural forms
("functional and social retreat") in remote communities have been cited
by D. Trotzig in the treatise, Slagan (Stockholm, 1943), Nordiska Museets
Handlingar, XVII, p. 113 f., and by J . Granlund in the essay, O x e n , o k et
o c h smålänningen (Hyltén-Cavellius-föreningens Årsbok 1943). I am grate­ful
to Professor Granlund for kindly informing me about this.
2 S See F. Hedblom in S v e n s k a Landsmål, 1964. p. 17 passim.
""Regarding efforts within more enlightened circles to preserve and but­tress
the Swedish language, see N. Hasselmo, "Language in Exile," in T h e
S w e d i s h I m m i g r a n t C o m m u n i t y in T r a n s i t i o n , 1963, pp. 121 ff.
256
or are preserved in English translations where L a n g r u m p a be­comes
"Long T a i l " and S t y g g b a c k e n becomes "Bad Point."
Comparable conditions have obtained within related immi­grant
groups, especially the Norwegian, whose place-names have
been researched by Haugen and Cassidy. The latter's inven­tory
of place-names in Dane county, Wisconsin,2 7 where the Nor­wegian
element in the population is especially strong, accounts
for a total of 11 Norwegian place-names out of 1,553 that were
investigated. With respect to official names (post offices, com­munities,
etc.) the Norwegians in Minnesota have nevertheless
maintained their national interest more than twice as well as
the Swedes, while the Danes had difficulty coming up with ten
names.2 8 Among the Scandinavians the Icelanders in North Da­kota
and Manitoba have managed the best. This coincides well
with Haugen's observation about the different rates of assimila­tion
among the Scandinavian groups.29
It would be interesting to broaden the comparison to other
immigrant groups, but this would carry us too far, especially
since the necessary documents are lacking or are difficult to ob­tain.
It should be added, however, that the American attitude
toward place-names from foreign language groups as a rule has
been generous. A known example is New York, where, when
the city was seized from the Dutch in 1664, only the name of
the city itself—Nieuw Amsterdam—was changed; the large sec­tions
like Brooklyn, Harlem, Yonkers, and others continue to
retain their Dutch names.
The period of time which allowed for "spontaneous" place-naming
in Swedish was short in most places, at best not more
than 50 to 60 years. In one case, at least, it has been consider­ably
longer. The Swedish colony of New Sweden in the Dela­ware
River Valley was founded in 1638 when the first shipload
of colonists set foot on land and the area was occupied for the
Swedish crown. However, Sweden could not maintain its posi­tion
as a colonial power in America for more than 17 years. New
Sweden was seized by the Dutch in 1655 and by the English in
2 7 F. Cassidy, T h e P l a c e - N a m e s of D a n e C o u n t y , W i s c o n s i n (Publication
of the American Dialect Society, VII).
2 8 Roy W. Swanson, "Scandinavian Place-Names in the American Dane­law,"
in S w e d i s h - A m e r i c a n H i s t o r i c a l B u l l e t i n , II: 3, p. 14.
2 0 Haugen, T h e N o r w e g i a n L a n g u a g e , I, pp. 228 f., 279 ff.
257
l
1664, but the Swedish language survived there for more than a
century, and the Swedish crown continued to send priests to
hold Swedish services. The last of these, appointed by Gustaf
III, died in 1831. We know that significant numbers of Swedish
place-names were located in New Sweden by means of the maps
that were drawn up during the last years of the colony by the
surveyor, Per Lindeström.3 0 The names were partly Christian
names like C h r i s t i n a s k a n s , P r i n t z h o f (residence for Governor
Printz), Nya Älvsborg, and partly spontaneous names like B a s t e
C r e e k ("Bathhouse Creek"), F i s k e k i l e n (a stream),3 1 T i m m e r ­ön,
T r a n e u d d e n , L i l l e f a l l s k i l e n (a stream), etc. In addition
there were Indian and Dutch names that the Swedes sometimes
accommodated to their own terminology and sometimes trans­lated.
For example, F u r u u d d e n ("Pine Point") was the transla­tion
of the Indian Koijäkä.3' It is often precarious to determine
what is primary and what is secondary in such a transference;
one meets the same common problems with respect to place-names
everywhere in America. The Swedish names about which
we can be reasonably certain are sufficiently numerous to dem­onstrate
that in New Sweden the right conditions existed for
giving nature names of the Swedish variety, but also that the
Swedish place-names had been considerably influenced by the
Dutch and English environment. Not many names had been
kept in use until our time after the decline of the Swedish lan­guage
in the Delaware Valley. O. R. Landelius3 3 has called at-
3 0 Amandus Johnson, T h e S w e d i s h S e t t l e m e n t s o n t h e D e l a w a r e , 1 6 3 8 -
1664, II. Lindeström's map is produced in facsimile opposite p. 514. (Cf.
also, among others, Per Lindeström, Resa till N y a S v e r i g e , edited by Alf
Åberg.)
3 1 The generic - k i l in this and other Swedish names in New Sweden could
well have come about under the influence of the Dutch k i l ("stream"), of
uncertain origin. See W o o r d e n b o e k d e r N e d e r l a n d s c h e Taal, K I L (II)
with references. Cf. Swedish k i l in place-names like L y s e k i l , et. al. See,
among others, O r t n a m n e n i Göteborgs o c h B o h u s län, II, p. 131.
3 2 A. R. Dunlap, D u t c h and S w e d i s h P l a c e - N a m e s in D e l a w a r e , pp. 29 ff.
See also the review by G. Franzén in Scandinavian Studies, XXIX: 3, pp.
142 ff.
3 3 O. R. Landelius, "Some Extant Swedish Geographic Names in the
Delaware Region," in T h e S w e d i s h P i o n e e r H i s t o r i c a l Q u a r t e r l y , IX: 4, pp.
124 ff. Landelius does not mention Upland, which is found on modern maps
as a western part of the city of Chester, between Wilmington and Phila­delphia
(see, for example, the map in Esther Chilstrom Meixner, S w e d i sh
(Landmarks i n t h e D e l a w a r e V a l l e y ) . The name is found in the same
location on Lindeström's map (see Amandus Johnson, op. cit., II, opposite
p. 514: Vplandh and Vplandhkijlen). According to Johnson (op. e i t , I, p.
258
tention to nine names in the Philadelphia-Wilmington area:
"Christina River," "Christiana" (a village), "Shellpot Creek"
(Swedish: Sköldpadde, meaning "turtle"), "Cobbs Creek" (from
the family name K a b b ) , "Garret Road" (after the Swedish
proper name, Gäret), "Longacre Boulevard" (Swedish farm
name, Långåker), "Morton" (a town after the Swedish proper
name Mårtensson), "Mullica H i l l " and "Mullica River" (after
E r i k M u l l i c a , a Finn from Hälsingland).
The Scandinavian immigrants' contribution to modern Amer­ica's
treasury of place-names is not significant, whether one views
it quantitatively or qualitatively. But it is nevertheless interesting
to study these names and the linguistic and communal condi­tions
which constitute their background and which are close
enough in time for us to follow them in detail. Just as the study
of modern dialects casts a light on linguistic changes in the past,
this more recent Scandinavian process of name-giving in a strange
environment could illuminate in certain respects the problems
which always arise concerning place-names at the point of "lan­guage
contact."
The most obvious example would be the tremendous extent
of Scandinavian place-names on British and French soil during
the Viking period. Just as in America, the invaders encountered
a native population whose language and prevailing culture —
especially in Normandy — soon assimilated them. The fact that
they still left such an extensive system of place-names — and
in addition a number of loan words in English and French dialects
— does not seem at first to depend, as some would like to think,34
on their number, but rather on their having dominated the po­litical
and social situation over a long period of time, giving them
the opportunity to determine and establish a pattern of place-
307 passim) a Swedish fort and plantations were found there. He assumes
that the place was named after the Uppland province in Sweden. Mean­while
the name is found in various places in America and includes in
many cases the English "upland," a word which even appears as a loan
word in American Swedish: å p p l a n n , a highly situated land-area (ULMA
Am 102). Dunlap mentions only a Dutch F o r t Oplandt, which he does not
link to Upland. The latter is also treated by Ruth L . Pearce, "Welsh Place-
Names in Southeastern Pennsylvania," in N a m e s , XI, pp. 37 f. In Welsh
it has become U w c h l a n.
3 4 See, for ex., Skautrup, op. cit., p. 98.
259
naming that weathered the changes in language and survived
until our time.
This is more than the Swedish-Americans of the nineteenth
century could accomplish. Place-names, "the most enduring cre­ations
of human thought," are still, along with some surnames,35
the only aspect of their language which they bequeathed to con­temporary
America. The American language has not deliberately
adopted from the Swedish language more than the loan word
"smorgasbord," but that, at least, is well known across the whole
continent!3 6
See, among others, Roy W. Swanson, "The Swedish Surname in Amer­ica,"
in A m e r i c a n S p e e c h , III, pp. 468 ff.
3 0 In passing one should mention the Swedish loan word o m b u d s m a n,
which has been introduced directly from Sweden in recent years. It is an
American equivalent to the Swedish j u s t i t i e o m b u d s m a n . Regarding the
appointment of an "ombudsman" in New York, see the article in D a g e n s N y ­h
e t e r , Nov. 13, 1966, p. 17, by S. Åhman.
260